Don’t condemn white artists for addressing race
This year, the Whitney Biennial exhibition displayed a painting of Emmett Till, the 14-year-old black boy whose murder helped launch the Civil Rights Movement. The painting depicts Till’s open casket and evokes the horror of his murder. But in an open letter to the exhibition, Hanna Black, a black artist and writer, criticized the painting for being racially insensitive. Her problem: the painter, Dana Schutz, is white.